A
Gallup
Poll released last week claims that roughly half of Americans believe
“the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute
wealth in the U.S.”

This is truly shameful.
Could anything be more crass? When I was growing up, government redistribution
of wealth was known as “communism.” Everybody laughed at Khrushchev
for predicting, “Your grandchildren will live under communism.”
(Ironically enough, his grandchildren won’t!) But according to Gallup,
“a solid majority of Americans, 57%, believe money and wealth in
the U.S. should be more evenly distributed among the people.” Looks
like Nikita knew which way the wind was blowing, doesn’t it?

Aside from the poll
revealing an abysmal ignorance of how wealth is generated, a more important
issue looms larger than that. We call ourselves Christians, most of us:
but let us get a whiff of someone else’s money, and we trample God’s
Commandments.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not covet
anything that is thy neighbor’s.

But half of us believe
it’s all right for the government to steal, as long as the politicians
share the plunder with us. And we believe such a thing because our exalted
leaders—not just the brigands occupying public office, but our so-called
educators, our “news” media, and even a great number of our
theologically-challenged churchmen—have inflamed us with a spirit
of covetousness. How many alarmist ravings has The New York Times published
on “income inequality”—as if there were such a thing
as “income equality”?

God’s Commandments
are not situational. It doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not steal,
except from someone who’s richer than you.”

Do you think it’s
not stealing, if the government does it on your behalf, through taxation?
Do you think it’s “social justice” when one man works
and Congress confiscates the fruit of his labor and doles it out to others?

Oh, but what about
“fair redistribution”—the kind we hear about from the
pulpits of our erring churches?

To believe in “fair
redistribution” is an amazing feat of hypocrisy. You have to ignore
the question of who gets to redistribute to whom. A Gallup statistic sheds
light on this: according to the poll, 71% of Democrats want the government
to redistribute wealth.

To put it simply,
what we’re talking about is slimy, sleazy politicians—in other
words, ordinary fallen, sinful human beings who are a bit more fallen
and sinful than most—robbing some citizens so they can “redistribute
wealth” to others. What others? Why, members of the Democrat voting
base, of course! So where is the “fair redistribution”? The
redistributing party in the legislature will always take money from people
who don’t vote for them and dole it out to people who do. It’s
how they plan to stay in power.

As wicked as this
is, the greater shame belongs to the churches, for despising God’s
Commandments and trying to curry favor with a culture of covetousness.
The “mainline” churches are most to blame, although quite
a few “evangelical” churchmen have hopped on the redistribution
bandwagon.

Some of these hypocrites
have the audacity to call theft “charity.” We must help our
fellow man, they say. But where is the charity in helping someone with
our neighbor’s money? This smacks of Judas Iscariot exalting himself
by griping that the precious ointment poured on Jesus’ head should
have been sold, and the money given to the poor. (John 12:4-6) Judas was
so high-minded and holy, he was willing to help the poor to the last drop
of Mary’s money!

Those who don’t
want to be taken for Judas shouldn’t talk like him.

Even if “the
rich,” whoever they are, didn’t get rich by working harder
than others, or by risking their own capital, or by innovating more creatively
than their competitors; even if they only inherited their wealth, which
would have been created by their parents or grandparents working hard;
even if they magically spun straw into gold, their property is lawfully
theirs and it’s still a sin to rob them. Charity and generosity
are virtues, but envy and legalized theft pollute a nation’s soul.

Subscribe
to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!

Enter
Your E-Mail Address:

Then again, I can
think of one form of wealth redistribution that seems both just and honest.

Let the members of
Congress redistribute back to us the money that we worked for, that they
sucked out of our paychecks, and spent on buying votes, setting up bureaucracies
that suck up still more money, treating themselves to all sorts of luxuries,
and trying to turn Nikita Khrushchev into a prophet. Let them redistribute
all that money back to where it came from, and see how much their loss
is America’s gain. Watch how this revives the economy and restores
voluntary charity to its rightful place.

Lee Duigon,
a contributing editor with the Chalcedon Foundation, is a former newspaper
reporter and editor, small businessman, teacher, and horror novelist.
He has been married to his wife, Patricia, for 34 years. See his new
fantasy/adventure novels, Bell Mountain and The Cellar Beneath the Cellar,
available on www.amazon.com